It’s my luck that the first pinball machine I purchased needs to be torn down to clean and restore the playfield. It would have been nice to have a nice, complete machine to drop into the gameroom, but I suppose it’s a great way to learn about pinball machines. My machine had years worth of wax and grime build-up on the playfield and its components. The rubbers also need replaced. Because of these issues I figured the best way to do it would be to pull out the playfield, disassemble it, and clean each individual component. Shouldn’t be that tough, huh?

The first thing I needed to do before tearing down this machine was to order some parts. I made orders through a couple good pinball parts vendors to make sure I had parts ready to go once I tore into the game. I brainstormed quite a few parts that I figured would be nice to replace and went from there. Here’s what I picked up:

The Pinball Resource – This site has a huge list of just about every type of part needed for pinball machines. I ordered new legs, levelers, rubber replacement kit, bulbs, sockets, flipper rebuild kits, pinballs, a few connectors, and some Novus to clean the playfield.

Action Pinball – I ordered from these guys because they had some great Earthshaker specific parts. They also have a nice set of hardware available. The best part was these guys shipped really fast!. I ordered some slingshot plastics, felt leg protectors, and some misc screws and hardware.

Before I could tear down the playfield, I had to start taking the cabinet apart. I wanted to remove the backbox and playfield from the actual cabinet to make it easier to take the cabinet down into the basement. I started by taking a ton of pictures of all the connectors in the backbox. There were several connectors that needed to be unplugged to separate the backbox from the rest of the game. I pulled almost all of them then ran into an issue with a couple connectors. Seems the last person that repaired the game decided to fix a failed connector by soldering the wires directly to the connector pins. Of course I would have to replace the connector to make sure this works properly and the wires don’t get crossed! I had to wait on the new connectors on order, so I put everything back together until they arrived.

No connector. NOT a best practice in pinball repair!!!

After removing the backbox, the playfield seemed much easier. It lifted right off of the pivot pins. Then I pulled off the four legs. I was pretty happy I was able to carry each of the main cabinet parts into the basement myself. It was a far cry from how difficult it was to carry out of the seller’s basement a couple weeks ago!

The cabinet all empty and ready to be cleaned

I spent a couple hours really cleaning the cabinet once I got it into the basement. I then added the new legs and levelers I purchased to replace the old ones that were bent and rusty. It was an amazing difference!

There was some definite wear under the old legs

Felt Pad in place

New leg installed. Nice and shiny!

This was the easy and fun restoration work. Next comes the hard part: the Playfield. More to come!